Arena Profile: Molly Moore

Molly Moore is Senior Vice President of Sanderson Strategies Group, a communications company in Washington, D.C. and Baton Rouge, La., that provides strategic counseling in the fields of politics, business, sports, environment and international affairs.

Before joining SSG, Molly spent 27 years as an award-winning reporter and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, where she specialized in international affairs and national security issues. She served as Washington Post bureau chief in New Delhi, Islamabad, Istanbul, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Paris, and worked in more than 50 countries during 16 years overseas. Before her foreign postings, Molly covered national security and defense issues as the Post’s chief Pentagon correspondent. Prior to that, she was the senior political reporter covering Virginia politics.

Molly has covered numerous wars and conflicts and has written extensively on the subjects of terrorism and global security. She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for her involvement in team coverage of the Kosovo war and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. She is also a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for international reporting and an Overseas Press Club Award. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, A Woman at War: Storming Kuwait with the U.S. Marines about her experience embedded with the Marines during the 1992 Gulf War.

A native of Lake Charles, La., Molly graduated from Georgetown University with B.A. in American government and worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Lake Charles American Press before joining The Washington Post.

Molly Moore's Recent Discussions

An Obama comeback?

This was the return of the Obama voters gravitated to four years ago: Engaged, feisty, folksy, take-no-prisoners.

Overall, he edged out Mitt Romney, though Romney also made a strong showing. The town hall format allowed voters a much broader view of the issues than the previous debate which often became so bogged down in numbers that viewers - and the candidates - lost track of the big picture. Real people ask better questions that go more sharply to the heart of issues than Washington media types who all too frequently flounder in the weeds of technical nuances.

As a result, the voters won in this debate. Those struggling to make up their minds got a clearer picture of the men, their messages and the type of government they would bring to Washington. It remains to be seen whether the answers they heard reinforced existing opinions of the candidates or moved many votes.

If I were an undecided voter, tonight’s debate did nothing to help me decide how to cast my ballot.

It was a debate of numbers, not heart. Neither candidate seemed to be trying to connect with the audiences at home. Both candidates too often sounded like school boys struggling to recall memorized lines.

President Obama came across as nervous and stumbling at times, Romney seemed more at ease in delivering his lines. Romney beat expectations, Obama didn’t meet expectations. As a result, Romney won this round on style. Neither candidate hit home runs on substance.

The distinction between those who report the news and those who opine on the news is becoming increasingly blurred, and that’s no surprise to anybody.

We’ve seen this over the last several campaigns and it’s a trend that’s not going to disappear. The problem is that the news people who want to play the celebrity game - support one side or the other or make themselves part of the news - should not masquerade as objective journalists and should not be portrayed as objective journalists by their companies. I think there’s no problem if someone wants to be in that role, but they need to be very clear about it.

I think the incidents you saw with some of the TV personalities like Juan Williams are just journalists who are more interested in promoting themselves than telling their audience what’s going on. I think that’s why you have some critics saying now that the analysis you’re seeing and the personalities you’re seeing are less informed about the campaigns, because you don’t see them going and doing the old shoe-leather journalism. Too much of it has become just reporting what other reporters and other analysts are saying.

I started out in old school journalism a couple decades ago, and for me, the most disturbing thing now is that people watch and read the news that reflects their own points of view. It makes them less open to opposing views and frankly less educated about the world around them and the campaign that they’re watching. I think it’s one of the key contributors to the partisan politics that we’re seeing that has paralyzed the Congress and the government.

I don’t think it’s any one thing to blame for that. It’s the changing times and the changing technology in journalism. The cable channels that have to fill 24 hours and there’s no way they can fill that with quality journalism every minute. And of course, there are bitter wars for viewers. You see CNN, which toes the line of being objective, and their ratings are in the toilet. Yet you see FOX and MSNBC who have very strong opinions, and their ratings are surging.

You see it in print as well. There are smaller staffs, and with that smaller staff you have to cover a bigger area. You’re not only writing that one story for the next morning, you’re doing your blog, you’re contributing to other stories, you’re probably doing TV and online interviews for both your publication and radio and TV that are calling you because you’re an expert political reporter. It’s not only political beats, it’s every beat. There’s less time to go out and collect information and a much greater demand to just shovel out information as you get it, sometimes unfortunately a little too unfiltered.

This tragedy and the events that prompted it show just how far we have not come since 9/11: Small-minded, extremist Jew makes and unleashes derogatory, mean-spirited attack on Islam; small-minded, extremist armed Muslims seek revenge by viciously attacking nearest symbol of America and killing U.S. diplomats who believed they were helping improve the lives of the attackers. There is plenty of blame to spread.

But the core problem remains: Continued distrust of America and American motives in the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world.

Our assistance to supporters of the Arab Spring has not mitigated our mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 11 years. We helped support efforts to oust some of the world’s most repressive leaders in the Middle East (many of whom we supported for decades). Now we must determine how to deal with citizens exercising new-found freedoms that too often turn violent. It will likely take us decades to undo the decade of deep mistrust we’ve helped create, just as will take some countries of the Arab Spring decades to figure out how to resolve differences by diplomacy rather than RPGs.

Unfortunately, in the process, far too many good lives are being lost.

The only way the Boy Scouts are going to change is by maintaining the pressure from within.

As the parent of a Boy Scout who fully supports gay rights, we applaud President Obama’s stance and hope he continues to push the organization to change its biased, unfair and outmoded exclusionary policy. The decision by the Scouts was extremely controversial within the organization and is not supported by a large percentage of Scout members, parents, leaders and donors.

President Obama can accomplish more as an outspoken honorary president than as an outspoken ex-honorary president of the Scouts. The Boy Scout decision is not keeping gays out of Boy Scouting - it merely allows the Boy Scout leadership to stick its collective head in the sand.

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